Columns

My Fourth of July celebrations always include barbecue, but not this year. I made the leap to a vegetarian diet on May 23. I’m already seeing benefits from the move, which has given me the willpower to remain meat-free. It was tested on the most popular holiday…

With stifling June heat and pollen cleared by rainfall, I opened my windows. Drivers finished their workdays and inched forward in traffic outside my home. Within minutes, gentle breezes carried exhaust fumes inside. I thought that by living two stories up I would escape car pollution, a common…

Father’s Day was always a good time for my family when I was growing up. My brother and I were raised by a single mother, but my maternal grandfather and uncle were role models. We come from a large family, so we always had my…

A pile of boards and bolts stood before me as the first inkling of doubt crept in. Gathering what tools I could find — a small hammer and two old screwdrivers — didn’t boost my confidence. It was seven steps to creation. What it turned out to be was a…

Recently, I thought about my past hospitalizations and how isolated I felt. I guess the events over the past three months with social distancing had me feeling isolated … again. I thought about the two months I spent in the lung center at one of our hospitals in…

I’ve avoided others throughout the pandemic because of my sarcoidosis. I had thought that if I ever ditched social distancing, it would be to embrace family, but it wasn’t. The first person to touch me since March was a mammography technologist who positioned me for a procedure that was…

An employer once asked me what was the one wish I wanted granted. Having battled sarcoidosis for years while in the workforce, the answer came easy. I asked for the option to telecommute. At the time, my wish didn’t come true.  June 11 is National Work From Home…

You are where you’re supposed to be — for now. Over the past three years, I’ve been dealing with the effects of pulmonary sarcoidosis. Having suffered multiple spontaneous pneumothoraces over a two-year period, I often wonder…

I spent the first hours of April poring through television news in the U.S. Not a single mention of Sarcoidosis Awareness Month for my efforts. I did see a bus advertising it roll by in the background of a live broadcast in Philadelphia. I smiled because that’s life with a…

Sometimes in relationships flaws become too glaring to ignore, which either leads to compromise or goodbye. That is now the case in my long love affair with meat.  I’ve made sacrifices over the years. My dates with the bad boys (red meat) aren’t nearly as frequent now.